Homesickness

Tonight I got an email from my cousin Raven announcing a tentative girls weekend in Ohio. It doesn’t help that I’m already a bit homesick. The email was in response to an earlier inquiry about getting together all the women of my mom’s mom’s mom (or the girls descending from my great-grandma, Mamaw). It appears that the weekend suggested is the one that marks the third anniversary of Mamaw’s death.

I remember sitting in Mamaw’s room the night she died. The women folk of the family were looking though photos and sharing stories. We decided that we needed to have a girl’s weekend. Finally, three years later one is being planned.

Problem: I’m on internship in South Dakota, and there’s no way I can get the time off.
Result: Increased homesickness.

Tomorrow Aaron and I have to travel to St. Peter, Minnesota for a meeting. We have to get up at 5:30a to get there on time. I can’t sleep. After I got Raven’s email I lost it. It’s great that the girl’s weekend is finally going to become a reality, but I can’t be there! While thinking about missing the weekend I began to think about when I’ll be in Ohio. Well, we’ll be in Ohio in December but then we’re away until May. That means 6 months without going to Ohio. I’ve done that before, but I’ve never lasted 6 months without seeing my mom and grandma. While I was in Milwaukee I was away for 6 months but Shannon, Mom, Grandma and Mel came at various times to break things up a bit. Specifically, Mom and Mel came the weekend after Easter, my first holiday away.

Now what. I know I’ll make it through, but it hurts (literally, my eyes are swollen and my head is pounding from crying so much). Somehow I’m reminded of my supervising pastor’s famous question that I’ve never had a real answer for until tonight, “do you still want to be a pastor?” For the first time I think I have an answer. If being away from my family of origin for extended periods of time is part of the package, no I don’t want to be a pastor.

I even came down hard on Aaron tonight. He was trying to make me feel better and I said, “if I lived as close as you do to your family I’d see my mom and grandma at least once a week.” Yes, families are different, but it’s hard to realize how physically close we are to his family, but we don’t see them with any greater frequency than if we lived in the cities. Right now, I’m jealous. I want to get in the car in the morning and drive until we reach Columbus. Better yet, I want a plane ticket to Ohio on February 23.